Aging Martial Artists

When older martial arts are practice many tend to think, Tai Chi Chuan. Where older practitoners are seen in parks, etc. making slow movements that are graceful, rhythmic and peaceful. Aging martial artists have to deal with those aging issues just like people who are not martial artist but one of the great things about martial arts is that one can practice the arts regardless of their age.

Tai Chi Chuan is a wonderful and beneficial system for any age but is especially beneficial, in my view, to those who have reached the, “Winter Years” of life. It is a wonderful time of life, the age beyond the first sixty years. The changes nature inflicts on us can be mitigated by certain mental and physical efforts and this blog is about how the effort of martial arts practice can and does mitigate and alleviate the aging processes.

So, this blog will be about that aging process and how the practice of martial arts can help. The first article that will follow will simply list those aging issues that directly relate to the practice of martial arts such as balance as it relates to falling. As with any effort such as this it warrants the readers effort in understanding that this effort is from a non-professional view and with that stated I encourage each reader review the caveat provided here and at the start of each article. I also encourage each and every person who is taking up this practice to make sure it meets approval by your personal medical professional. Get that before you try to participate in martial arts or any program that would benefit you as you age.

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Friday, January 20, 2017

Free Will in Self-Fense

This is about your free will, the fact that you don’t rely on others and other actions to act. You make the choices you make as if you were prescient by the ‘tells/signs’ you discover through sight, sound and especially touch. By the fact that you learned to read the signs, as if hunting in the deep woods watching for signs on the trail, in the bushes and by the environmental signals such as sudden and complete silence and so on. Your free will is that permission you give yourself to act when the tells or signs appear be it to turn around and go elsewhere, to run away or to work communications of deescalation.

Free will is also about bypassing the O&D of the OODA loop by observing the signs of impending violence and making the first move and remaining in movement as if a gyroscope. If you are taking a stance or observing in order to determine a means of self-fense then you are not acting with free will, you are being controlled by the others actions of free will - you are reacting to his actions and if you have studied the professionals they all tend to say, “Reactions are slower that actions and harder to overcome toward actions.” Something like that or similar but once you react and they move freely and act freely you will remain in a reactive mode unable to stop the threat except in rare exceptional cases when you shift from reactions to actions, taking the initiative. Best case scenario.

Listen, it has been said and proven that in most attacks you are already in a bad state where your OODA is frozen, you are taking damage and you have to move in a way that takes back the initiative. Wouldn’t it be better to act first through free will, the will to either walk away, to run or to fold the cards and hope you can deescalate things?

Fee will starts by taking the initiative in your training and practices toward a more proactive active stance where your entire repertoire consists of tells, signs, knowledge, understanding, and experience that allows you to use your free will to do what is smart and beneficial, take the first step by moving first, continue to move and provide a way out to your attacker and yourself.

Free will starts by giving yourself permission to question everything, to find answers, to condition your primal responses accordingly and to allow for the first move much like the old karate credo to attack first. Attacking first does not mean hitting, kicking, dumping, disturbing structure and doing damage, it means taking the initiative to act and move first in a variety of ways and a variety of methodologies.

Speaking of methodologies, i.e., “Multiple Methodologies [actual tactics and attack methodologies of impacts, drives (pushes), pulls, twists, takedowns/throws and compression, are best for stopping a threat]” When I talk about methodologies as stated in the last I mean those but there are other methodologies of which I write here such as initiative, free will, action over reaction, avoidance and deescalation and so on, those methods that will achieve your goal of going home alive and in good heath. With these additional methodologies you can still stop a threat, stop the damage and achieve success in your self-fense. Utilizing every single tool begins by using your free will to make a decision and give yourself permissions to do “EVERYTHING” humanly possible to avoid conflicts and violence.